S17: Occupy Wall Street Turns One by Eric Walton 9.22.12
These men and women were ready for action and when there was no action to be found, they wasted no time creating it themselves.
September 17th, 2012 marked the one-year anniversary of Occupy Wall Street. I arrived in Manhattan’s Financial District at around 7:30 that morning to find that Wall Street had been rendered unoccupiable by the NYPD. Hundreds of New York’s Finest were stationed behind steel barricades that blocked the streets leading to Wall Street and The New York Stock Exchange, while hundreds more officers, some on foot, some on mopeds, and some in riot gear, stood sentinel at strategic points around the perimeter of the Golden Fortress.
By the end of the day, the police had arrested one-hundred and eighty-one people, which, for someone who was there and witnessed first-hand the non-violent nature of the event and the innocuous jubilation of the majority of demonstrators themselves, is an extraordinary number. Among those taken into custody were journalists, writers, and artists, including writers John Knefel and Wes Trexler, and the prolific artist and entrepreneur Molly Crabapple, whose only apparent crime was showing up.
The following are photos I took throughout the day.
These men and women were ready for action and when there was no action to be found, they wasted no time creating it themselves.
